Eyes That Can See in the Dark
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, fourshot, sequel to 'Rejoicing in Their Strength.' Draco, for a year after the events of that story. COMPLETE.
1. First Moon

**Title: **Eyes That Can See in the Dark

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings:** Bloody animal death, sex, violence, profanity, some mentions of past torture and gore. This ignores the DH epilogue.

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Draco, for a year after the events of _Rejoicing in Their Strength_.

**Author's Notes: **This is a sequel to my chaptered fic _Rejoicing in Their Strength_, and won't make much sense (and will spoil the ending of that story for you) if you haven't read the previous one. The title comes from a Rudyard Kipling poem, "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack." This will be a fourshot.

**Eyes That Can See in the Dark**

_Chapter One—First Moon_

The Aurors were stupid.

That was Draco's sole thought as he leaned back against a tree in the small woods near the Malfoy estates, with Harry's arms securely wrapped around him, but not his sole sensation. He could feel the warmth from Harry at his spine, like a devouring furnace, and the way that Harry sometimes lowered his head so that he could nuzzle the back of Draco's neck, and how his breath sighed out now and then, as though he wondered what he had done to deserve Draco in his life.

Draco highly approved of all those sensations.

Right now, though, he was watching the Aurors picking through Malfoy Manor, doing their very best to identify the murderers of Lucius Malfoy, and shocking themselves with what they found. Rooms full of torture equipment, with no magical signature but Lucius's on them. Books of Dark Arts with certain pages marked. Ropes and chains, screws and shovels, shards of glass and bolts of iron.

Draco could have told them all those things were there, and that he had suffered from Lucius's supposedly tender care for years. The Aurors had come regularly to make sure that his family was keeping to its house arrest, but so unobservant were they that they had never noticed "Narcissa Malfoy" was only an illusion—Lucius had tortured her to death months ago—and that Draco was under multiple glamours to hide the wounds that had almost destroyed his body.

They had never noticed that Lucius was mad, suffering from the effects of casting too much Dark magic down the years, though it was an easy conclusion to come to, and something Draco knew they had investigated with other former Death Eaters. But a polite smile and witty conversation was all that was necessary to fool them.

Oh, Draco could have spoken out, but then Lucius would have killed him. He preferred survival to trying to inform the Aurors of something they should have noticed for themselves.

And right now, he had no inclination to solve their other problem for them, either: namely, what had happened to make the wards of Malfoy Manor fall and a large pack of werewolves surge through them and kill Lucius Malfoy in what looked like a targeted hunt. Not even werewolves using Wolfbane, ran the thought, would have been so rational. And if the Ministry hadn't known what was happening here, how could anyone else have known?

Harry lowered his head so that Draco felt the scrape of his teeth, and whispered, "We should go."

Draco nodded. Harry's pack had come back at dawn of the full moon night when Harry had slaughtered Lucius and cast spells that should cover every trace of their magical signatures and confuse the tracks enough that it looked like fifteen or twenty werewolves had been there instead of five (six, if one counted the newly turned Draco). They had likewise carefully removed every trace of the fivefold pack-strength that had let them get through the wards, though they couldn't restore them to exact, pristine condition without a mastery over the house and gardens that not even Draco possessed. Then they had kept a watch on the house each day, waiting for the Aurors to discover the death.

Now they had, and they had only grown more bewildered as their investigation went on, instead of less. Draco was confident that they would find no clue to lead them to Harry's pack.

"We should go," Harry said again.

Draco twisted to look up at him with a slight smile. Harry's power flapped around him like a cloak or a rising wind. It hadn't been easy for Draco to ignore when he was a mere spiritual traveler, using his astral body to escape the torments of his physical one. It was even less easy now that he was a werewolf and all but Harry's acknowledged partner. He lifted his hand and laid his fingers along Harry's jaw.

"All right," he whispered.

Together, they made their way back into the woods and Apparated home, to the Forest of Dean.

*

As his first full moon spent as a werewolf drew closer, Draco had begun to have problems with Hyacinth.

She watched him with remote eyes most of the time now, while in the first days after he transformed she had been full of helpful advice about learning to live with a strong wolf, or need, inside him. She seemed content to think that he made Harry happy. She didn't resent the time that Harry spent with him, and in fact had warned Celia, Josh, and Leila off when they showed their teeth to Draco.

But now something had changed, and without entirely knowing what it was, Draco was reluctant to speak to her directly.

His wolf stirred in him restlessly, but with fits and starts, making Draco suddenly see blood running across the surface of a calm pool or interfering when he tried to brew Wolfsbane. Now and then it made one of his old injuries—not even the transformation could heal him completely—flare up, especially in his legs, which Lucius had cut to shreds before the pack rescued him. The wolf seemed to believe that it ought to have a completely healthy body, and was punishing Draco for the wounds he could do nothing about. He gritted his teeth and endured each time, because he knew that complaining would only increase the tensions within the pack, always greater near the full moon.

This afternoon, though, was the worst. The wolf pressed down on him like a second sun, and he lay still and panted, unable to concentrate even on his brewing. The scents of the forest made his head reel. His hands opened and shut without purpose, and he remembered the tortures that Lucius had inflicted on him to make that happen. He shut his eyes, but that made shapes surge across his mental vision, as though he were watching imaginary wolves chase real deer.

"Up."

The voice pierced to the core of him, and Draco was abruptly on his feet before he knew he was going to obey. Of course, Harry always had that effect on him. Before Draco had become a member of the pack, he had felt much the same way, enchanted and soothed and drugged by the strength that Harry carried with him.

But Harry was out for a run in the forest with Celia and Josh, helping them to work off some of their extra energy and spending time with them to ease their jealousy. Leila had gone off by herself among the trees with a book, as she often did when the moon was coming. The only one left in the glade besides Draco—

Was Hyacinth.

She gazed at him without moving, her eyes so violently yellow that Draco felt his lips pulling back from his teeth in an instinctive snarl. He had seen those eyes turn red when she was rescuing him, but that had not been as frightening. Then, Draco was caught up in the excitement of finally seeing the man who had tortured him punished, and he had floated in his astral body, beyond any physical touch that Hyacinth might try to offer him. Only Harry was powerful enough to touch a spirit.

But now he was in his body, and Hyacinth was on all fours and _still _looming over him.

Draco remembered Harry warning him that Hyacinth's wolf was strong enough to have driven her to commit murder in the days before she joined the pack, and that even Harry could barely contain it. He was to back down if she seemed challenging.

But Draco's pride had survived much of the contest with his father; at times, it had been the only raft he had to cling to on a vast and lonely sea. He was not about to surrender it now. And his wolf was in flood. Surely the magic that churned down his limbs and baked his bones was as strong as Hyacinth's.

He lay back down, in defiance of her command, and showed his teeth to her.

Hyacinth moved a step closer, her head lowering, a growl rumbling up her throat. The growl was frankly terrifying, and Draco knew that she could smell his fear.

But he wouldn't be cowed by anyone short of Harry himself. So he growled back.

Hyacinth stepped away and turned her back on him, as though he had done something that changed her opinion of him. Draco found himself bracing for her to whirl around him and bite.

But she only said, in a thick voice choked with the remnants of dying things, "We will see what happens when the moon shines, little dog," and walked across the clearing to lie down near one of the doors of the houses. In moments, she was asleep.

Draco stared at her for a long time. She showed no sign that she was feigning, and no inclination to stand back up and confront him again, so he gradually stood up and went back to his brewing.

He hated the fact that he kept glancing over his shoulder, and continued to do so until Harry returned.

*

The moon was up and the magic was flowing.

Draco shuddered when the transformation took hold. He had lived almost a month now without any major pain, other than the discomfort of minor injuries that would always be there, and he hated the sensation of it flooding him now. But he dug his nails into the earth, contrasted the present with the past to the glory of the present, and endured.

Besides, it was pleasant to feel the tormenting restlessness stop at last and the sap of strength and life flood his limbs. He trotted a few steps forwards, his head up and his nose at last separating out all the scents from each other properly. Harry could talk all he liked about a werewolf's enhanced senses; they still seemed dim and confused when they had to work with the human physical equipment. Wind flowed better into a long canine muzzle, and there were sensitive hairs to funnel the air the right way. Draco sneezed in pleasure and rolled in the dirt so that some grains would cling to his silver coat, purely because he cared less about being clean when he was lupine.

Celia and Josh ranged past him, whirling round and round in play. They were so equally matched in strength that neither of them could gain a permanent hold over the other, and so each new fight was another chance that might go to either of them. Draco scrambled back to his feet and watched with his tongue hanging out. He didn't know who he favored. Celia smelled more of determination and was, he thought, the more intelligent of the pair, but Josh had better control of his wolf and so was the model that Draco aspired to more at the moment.

It ended with Celia crouching so that Josh slammed into her instead of leaping over her, and she whirled around and pinned him to the ground with her teeth on his muzzle so he couldn't breathe. Josh whined in resignation and wagged his tail to show that he'd surrendered, since with the position he was in he couldn't bare his belly or throat. Celia wagged back, then nipped him and pranced around the clearing to demonstrate her strength.

Leila walked towards Draco, her back leg dragging slightly, and gave him a formal sniff, which Draco returned. She hadn't participated directly in his rescue, not having the strength to leap to the floor of Malfoy Manor where Lucius had imprisoned him, and she was shyer than Celia and Josh, so Draco hadn't got to know her very well even in the month since. But he had admired her brewing skills and the way she kept up with the pack despite the injury she had received before her turning. If Josh was his model for the way to control his wolf, Leila was his model for coping with less than physical perfection.

Now, as her scent flowed over him and Draco caught traces of fear and anxiety and loneliness and envy, he understood that Leila sometimes felt left out of the pack herself. She was older than the rest, with more of her life behind her before she was changed, and she wasn't as strong. She had wondered if anyone else felt like she did, and looked in vain for reassurance. Harry had seen to the bottom of her dilemma and offered her sympathy, but Harry couldn't always be around, and Leila wouldn't want him to soothe her all the time even if he could be. She had her pride.

Draco understood all that with a single sniff, and saw Leila regarding him with softened eyes and a slow wag of her dark tail. She understood him better, too. Draco panted. Being werewolves certainly made communication more efficient.

Then Harry howled.

The clearing was so supercharged with the rolling electrical power of the pack that Draco hadn't felt him step out of the house where he preferred to change—it was as though Harry had some qualm about letting them see his mouth and nose warping out of shape and his limbs melting and twisting—but there he was now, a handsome black wolf six feet tall at the shoulder, most marked by the ragged patch of white on his forehead where the scar had once stood and the golden eyes that retained a trace of green. He yawned and swept his tail back and forth, looking carefully around the glade.

At least Draco wasn't the only one watching him avidly. Harry was the strongest werewolf present and the heart and center of the pack.

Harry trotted towards Draco and shouldered into him in greeting, nipping his jaw lightly. Draco nipped his back and then pressed himself against Harry's side, sighing in relief as warmth flooded him. He missed this when they were human. Harry could conjure enough power to make Draco feel enclosed in a thick blanket, but it wasn't the miracle that it had been when Draco was a pure spiritual body who would know no kindness in his physical life.

Then the clearing shook with a second advent of power.

Draco glanced up. Hyacinth, a bright scarlet wolf, was coming out of her own house, and her eyes were fixed on him, yellow swimming with dots of red.

Draco showed his teeth and felt all the fur on his body stand up. Hyacinth prowled forwards, step by silent step, her fangs showing. Draco knew that this was a challenge. Hyacinth knew that Draco was near in power to her and Harry, but not how near, and when they were human, there wasn't room for this kind of physical fight, especially given Draco's injuries.

The way she scraped a paw through the dirt and pissed contemptuously in it now said that she thought torn ears and malformed legs should not slow him down.

Draco could feel Harry, Leila, and the rest of them backing out of the way. This was a battle they had no part in, and as concerned as Harry might be—Draco knew that he had shielded Draco from contact with Hyacinth a few times today, when the pull of the moon became particularly bad for her—he couldn't interfere. Werewolves were a mingling of human and wolf, but more in thrall to their wolves when the moon rode high.

Draco howled and sprang forwards to meet Hyacinth.

She charged with a deliberately weighty pace, Draco noticed, doing her best to make use of her enormous mass. She was shorter than Harry, but heavier. Draco knew that he would simply be bowled over if he tried to meet her head-on.

So he spun to the side, light and fast, and ripped open her shoulder with his teeth, then sprang aside before Hyacinth's return strike, made with a paw instead of her fangs, could hit and paralyze him. Hyacinth snarled in pain. Draco danced around her, making little feints inwards, his mind full and buzzing.

Usually, the wolf felt like an alien twitch in the back of his brain, an alien taste in his mouth. This time, they were fully in accord, because Draco was doing what the wolf wanted. Intoxicated, he danced, and saw again the wisdom of Harry's way of handling the wolf: give it what it wanted some of the time, and the rest of the time it would spend torpid and under your control, working for you instead of fighting you.

He could only lure Hyacinth into a futile waltz for a few minutes before she regained command of her rage. Then she crouched and bared her fangs. Draco came alertly to a stepping stop, his legs braced for movement in either direction.

Hyacinth simply waited, tilting her head a bit to the side. She smelled of scorn and fury, and Draco's pride rose. Had she learned _nothing _during her contest with him? Did she still think him so unworthy of respect? She was showing him her throat not in submission, he knew, but because she thought he wouldn't be able to give her a fatal wound there before she could tear her head down and bite him in return.

Snarling his own contempt back, Draco charged.

Hyacinth remained in place all the time, bracing herself for their meeting. So Draco decided that he would give her a blow that would stir her no matter what happened. He changed the angle of his rush and lowered his shoulder so that he would roll her.

Hyacinth's head twisted back and her jaws flared open. Draco didn't see the trap until too late; he'd committed too much to his own momentum, the way Hyacinth had in that first clash when he had managed to wound her.

Her fangs caught him on the leg, and then Hyacinth flexed her neck and spine as she surged to her feet and _flipped _him, over her head and around in a howling heap until he landed heavily on the ground. Draco panted, blinking the moonlight and the battle out of his eyes, and then discerned Hyacinth above him, looming, enormous, stinking, pressing down with her fangs on his throat and growling a question.

Draco wished that wolves had longer nails on their paws than they did. He would have loved nothing more than to reach up with one hind leg and scrape at Hyacinth's unprotected belly, tearing a wound there and forcing her to release him and deal with it. The next time, he would be wise to her traps and not caught as easily.

But for the moment, he had short nails, and she was pressing down more, and it was getting hard to breathe.

Draco snarled back and tilted his head reluctantly, showing his pale belly to the moon and the pack, but also showing his teeth, so that none of them could think he'd surrendered of his own free will.

Hyacinth leaped back and howled her triumph to the sky. Then she whirled around. Draco rolled to his paws and away in time before she could piss on him.

Then she looked as if she might consider challenging him about that, but Harry howled in his turn, his voice a silver ladder straight to the stars, and the rest of the pack had no choice but to blend their howls with his. Draco turned and saw Hyacinth at Harry's side, giving him a challenging stare. Draco lowered his ears and joined the pack right behind her, avoiding her direct gaze.

Harry moved his tail, sweeping it lightly across Draco's face in reassurance before he leaped forwards.

And suddenly Draco was part of that chase that he had only watched before, the pouring silver flashing and leaping of it, the charge over logs and past dead trees, the jump over small hollows in the ground, the whip of wind through guard hairs and uplifted ears, the brush of a tail against the sky. The moon was everywhere, maddening, whipping their blood to froth, calling howls out of Draco's throat almost without effort.

He _leaped_, and the world leaped with him, the trees falling down behind him and the starry sky looming closer, the sky collapsing away and the trees dancing up, until the earth welcomed him back after his flight with a dusty sigh of satisfaction.

When they bounded through patches of moonlight, the effect was so great that Draco wanted simultaneously to continue the straight run and to run madly in circles chasing his tail until he collapsed from the dizziness. It was only Harry that kept him with the hunt and the pack, dancing and running on.

_Harry._

Draco knew he must have felt this overwhelming power from him before, the first time he had been wolf, but he had not noticed it at the time, caught up in the immediate differences that came with walking on four legs and seeing the world as clearly with his nose as with his eyes. But now, he felt it like a rushing river or a second moon, pulling him in closer, making him rise and rise until it seemed possible to soar forever without thought of a fall.

Hyacinth ran ahead, directed by Harry's yelps to do her own hunting, and Draco surged up to run beside Harry.

He kept up with ease. Harry flicked his eyes and ears sideways, and his scent exploded in pleasure. Then he tucked his ears flat to his head and charged an immense barrier of brush in the way, which Draco thought was growing on a fallen tree.

Up and over he swished, his muscles like iron, his coat like running blood.

And Draco was beside him, his muscles like steel, his coat like running water.

Draco knew they hunted that night, because he woke in the morning with blood on his mouth, and he had confused, distant memories of catching a rabbit and tearing its head off. But for him, the night _was _that moment:

He and Harry, in flight under the moon, side by side and equal in strength and in joy.


	2. Balancing on the Tripwire

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Balancing on the Tripwire_

Draco lifted his head and sniffed carefully. After four months with the pack and a week alone in the wild so that he could wrestle with his wolf without anyone else about, he could tell when someone's scent was edged with anxiety and panic even in human form, whose scent it was, and how serious the situation was.

The most unusual thing about the scent he was smelling now was that it came from Harry.

Draco continued brewing until he reached a stage where he could safely stop—no sense in ruining a batch of Wolfsbane when he knew from the smell that Harry was in no immediate danger—and then laid aside the stirring rod and ladle he'd been using to walk towards the smell. Hyacinth was out of the forest altogether for the moment, apparently visiting one of her few relatives who would still have anything to do with her. Leila had vanished into the depths of the trees with a book as she often did, and Celia and Josh were asleep. That left Draco to tend to Harry.

Not that he minded.

He tracked the floating emotions to one of the houses under a Disillusionment Charm which Draco had noticed the first time he came to the pack's clearing. The buildings were tiny and not often inhabited by the pack, but Harry insisted they have them to help further balance their wolf and human sides. Draco, who had hated sleeping in the rain the most during his week alone—not even Impervious Charms kept off the water as well as blankets and a roof—was grateful for his.

Now he ducked his head and peered tentatively into Harry's house. Sometimes Harry snapped and snarled when someone violated his rare moments of privacy.

Snapping and snarling would have reassured Draco at the moment. Harry lay with his head facing away from the door, so that Draco couldn't see his expression. He had his arms wrapped around his head, and he crouched very still. The anxiety was a stink in here, to the point that Draco wanted to hold his breath when he whispered, "Harry?"

A vibration ran through Harry, and he lifted his head. But he continued staring ahead, so that Draco couldn't catch his eye, and only said in a low, neutral voice, "Draco."

His scent couldn't lie in the way that his tone could. Wards shrieking in alarm would have frightened Draco less than his scent.

He slid into the house without further thought. Harry kept his home small on purpose, with barely enough room for the bed he lay on, but Draco had shared it with him several times by now and didn't care. He draped himself over Harry instead, pressing his chest to Harry's back, entwining Harry's arms with his, and pressing his forehead against Harry's shoulder.

"I'm here," he said. "No matter what. I won't let whatever's wrong consume you. It can't harm me. It won't swallow me."

He repeated those words, and many others, to the point where they sounded in his ears as nonsense. He could smell the anxiety dimming, and that was the only thing he cared about.

Finally Harry sighed and rolled over under him, lifting his arms to embrace Draco. Draco stared into his eyes and saw shadows there that he cursed himself for not noticing earlier. Harry should never have walked around carrying this burden—whatever it was—alone for so long.

"I've been struggling," Harry admitted slowly, without Draco having to convince him to say anything, "with how to balance my wolf and my human. I had it mostly under control. And then, when I murdered Lucius, I gave in too much to my wolf. These last three full moons, I've felt the beast inside me howling to be let out and kill indiscriminately. It even fights the Wolfsbane, which it never did before." He shuddered, and Draco thought he would have rolled over again and buried his head away, but Draco let himself go limp so that Harry couldn't push his weight aside so easily.

Draco spent a careful few minutes considering what he should say. He couldn't apologize for asking Harry to kill Lucius. He had needed his father to suffer in much the same way he had. And he had needed him dead, to bring about closure of some sort. He would always have feared that Lucius was out there if that didn't happen, hunting him and threatening to expose him to the rest of society as a werewolf. It didn't matter how impossible it would have been for Lucius to figure out what pack had taken him if they had simply snatched him in the middle of the night. Knowing his father and his obsession with Dark magic that could accomplish the near-impossible for a steep price, Draco knew he would have found a way.

He couldn't say that he was sorry that his needs had caused Harry's wolf to rebel, when he would ask the same thing again. But he could share the burden.

"Then focus your wolf on me," he said quietly.

Harry shifted and stared up at him. The gold in his eyes had eaten the green, which was a frightening thing to see a week out from the full moon. Harry shivered and shook his head. "What kind of monster would I be if I ate you, Draco?" he asked. "I would rather suffer any fate than that."

Draco stroked his face for a moment. He understood, but he didn't think Harry did. "I'm not asking you to eat me," he said. "I'm asking you to think of me when you feel that your wolf might burst the bounds. I'm counting on your feelings for me—" he still didn't want to say the word _love _often, because sometimes he wondered if it was love and because he felt that would make it less special "—to restrain it and make it realize that it wants to protect instead of eat me. That should make it easier to control."

Harry looked up at him, so motionless that Draco wondered for a moment if he'd made the offer in the wrong tone, or in a way that would force Harry to despise him, or—

Harry's hand shot up, fingers tangling and winding in his hair. He yanked Draco down and kissed-bit him, so hard that Draco opened his mouth with a gasp. In a moment, Harry's tongue was tangling with his in the same way that his fingers tangled into Draco's hair, and then he rolled over and pinned Draco to the bed beneath him.

Draco went willingly. Harry had the hot metal smell of lust now, and the anxiety scent had vanished entirely underneath it. Draco even opened his legs more widely and hunched up, wanting to remind Harry he had an erection ready to be rubbed against.

Harry refrained, as he had the most maddening habit of doing at times. He had explained that, when he was fucking Draco, he became completely immersed in the fucking and ignored the outside world. He wasn't always ready to let such an overwhelming emotion flow across his mind. Draco thought he could stand more of it, especially since no one else was in the glade right now who could demand his attention, but he didn't argue when Harry broke the kiss, lowered his head, and licked Draco's cheek. This was so much better than what Draco had envisioned him doing when he first smelled him—biting into his own skin, probably, or tearing at his face with flying fingers the way he had once confessed to Draco he had done immediately after Greyback had bitten him, wildly thinking that he could claw the wolf out from beneath his skin.

"_Thank you_," Harry whispered.

Draco shivered. The words were heavy and coiled around his ear, mouthing it, like a snake. He could listen to Harry say things like that forever and never grow tired of them.

"I never knew that I could have someone who would listen to me so closely," Harry went on, his hands sliding up and down Draco's skin, creating trails of heat and friction that made Draco want to curl closer to him. "Most of the time, I have to take care of the rest of the pack. That doesn't leave me a lot of time for helping myself. I was thinking that I needed to keep the news of my wolf rebelling to myself, because it would unnerve Celia and Josh and make Hyacinth think that she might need to challenge me." His hands slid up to Draco's shoulders and pressed down, while his eyes shone with a fire that made Draco wriggle in both excitement and dread. He had never had to cope with someone looking at him like that until he met Harry. "But you."

"What about Leila?" Draco had to ask, since he had noticed the name missing from recitation of the pack members.

"She's the least in tune with her wolf," Harry said simply, "because she's the weakest of us, and she came the latest to the change. She told me once that some part of her always remains human, and she's horrified by what she's doing when she hunts, while all I know is enjoyment at the time."

Draco frowned, thinking of something. "But she was able to use her magic to help you enter the Manor, which you said required the pack to be able to command their wolf magic while they were in human form. I think she's more in tune with the wolf form than you believe she is."

Harry blinked startled eyes for a moment. Then he smiled ruefully and dipped his head to rest against Draco's shoulder, lightly nipping at and tasting the skin. "You're right. I shouldn't need someone to tell me things like that about my own pack." His grip tightened again. "But since someone has to, I'm glad it's you."

Draco turned his face towards Harry. "And will you do your best to control your wolf by focusing on thoughts of me?" he asked quietly. He winced as Harry's teeth brushed past his ear. His lobes were still missing, and so Harry would never be able to bite him there. But Harry didn't halt or say anything to make him feel self-conscious; he nodded instead and sighed.

"Yes. It'll be difficult. It had one taste of human blood, and it wants more." Harry grimaced at that and shook his head a moment later. "No, that's not true. To the wolf, human blood doesn't taste any sweeter than the blood of rabbits or deer. _I_ believe, and other people believe, that werewolves especially murder humans, and that influences what the wolf wants."

Draco stored that useful piece of information away. It had hardly been a secret before, but this was the phrasing that made the most sense to him. Maybe he could change what his wolf wanted by changing what he believed.

"Then think of me," he said, sliding his hand across Harry's cheek. "And remember that I will never be sorry that you killed Lucius, whatever the results were."

Harry sighed again in answer and pressed closer, but said nothing. Draco suspected that he bore guilt he wouldn't talk about, purely human guilt.

_Well, perhaps Leila can help him with that._

*

"Draco? May I speak with you a moment?"

Draco had never heard Leila's voice sound so diffident. He set aside the book on Muggle history he was reading—Granger had lent it to the pack, and he was constantly surprised by what the Muggles had got up to around the time of Grindelwald—and focused on her. "Yes? What's the matter?"

Leila sat down in front of him with a frown, her grey-streaked hair hanging around her face. Alone of all the pack except Hyacinth, she seemed indifferent to the fact that she might look wild in human form as well as in wolf form. Her clothes were ragged, too, peeling back from her limbs thanks to branches and thorns and underbrush.

"You suggested that Harry should talk to me." Leila folded her arms and cocked her head to the side. Draco could see the wolf's curiosity in her motions, especially now that the full moon was coming close again, but her eyes didn't turn yellow and she didn't growl at him. He decided those were good signs. "Why? I'm the smallest in strength of any of the pack, and I haven't taken to this life as well as the others."

"Because I think that you might understand some of his struggles," Draco said, with a small shrug, wondering why she had sought him out. _If she knows that I sent Harry to talk with her, then it's not as though she can be afraid I'd be jealous. _"That's all."

Leila stared away from Draco into the forest. Her eyes were narrow and distant, and her voice had lowered. "I'm nothing in strength compared to you or Hyacinth. You're the right confidants for him, the ones who would understand him best."

Draco snorted. "Who told you that? Hyacinth?"

Leila faced him and blinked. "It's simply the way it is. Harry explained to us when we first joined the pack that the strength of our magic would help determine our ranking—"

"Maybe your magical strength determines which fights you would win and what kinds of animals you could hunt," Draco said, with strength that surprised him, "but it doesn't determine who you can talk to or how much help you can be with ordinary problems. Why would it? I know that you're less wolf than some of the others, but you seem to be taking the animal more seriously than any of the others do, and letting it limit you."

Leila sat backwards on the grass in surprise—she'd been crouching on her haunches so far—and then winced, probably because the motion had re-aggravated her old wound. Draco flinched in sympathy. He knew what that was like.

"I didn't think of it like that," Leila muttered. She wrapped her arms around her legs and shook her head. "When one looks at Harry and Hyacinth, one can't help wanting to be like them, to become them, no matter what the price is for carrying that magic."

Draco snorted again. "I'm sure that Hyacinth would like nothing more than for you to believe that. She fears that power and revels in it at the same time. She'd like other people to fear her so she can feel powerful and respected."

"But Harry?" Leila peered between strands of hair at him, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

"Harry…" Draco shook his head. He wanted to convince Leila, but he was not about to betray things he knew about Harry from Hogwarts or from sharing his bed, which Harry might regard as secrets.

"Harry is different," he said at last. "I don't know how much you heard about him, since I don't know when you were turned—"

"Very soon after the Battle of Hogwarts," Leila said. "I heard enough to know what he'd done, and of course he was a beacon of hope to all of us during the war." She looked faintly wistful for a moment. Draco wondered enviously what that would have been like, being able to think of Harry as a beacon instead of a feared and deadly enemy who would make their lives even _worse _if he managed to destroy the Dark Lord.

"Imagine all the stories that you've heard about heroes," Draco said. "Not the way they are, the way they should be. The way you want to imagine them. Humble and heroic at once, compassionate at heart and uneasy with the honors that they receive for their exploits. People who duck away from cameras even though they don't have any choice but to put up with the cameras following them around all the time. People who make you feel that celebrity really could be a _trial_, instead of the glamorous life that you know it is and which most of the rich people who moan about it wouldn't dream of giving up."

"All right," Leila said after a minute. "I can imagine that. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Imagine that all the stories are true, and embodied in one person, if no one else in the world," Draco said quietly.

Leila closed her eyes. "That makes it all the more impossible that he should want to talk to _me_," she said at last. "I'm the most ordinary member of the pack, as both wolf and human." Draco started to argue, but she gave him a fierce glance. "Even as far as being human was concerned. I don't have a tragic story like Hyacinth's. I wasn't cut off at the height of my career like Celia; she was a dancer, and a good one. I'm not even remarkable for my personality, like Josh."

Draco shrugged. He couldn't say that he had especially noticed Josh's personality; Josh seemed so easygoing that one could assign any character trait to him and he would probably agree that he had it somewhere.

"Try to think of yourself as someone extraordinary," he answered. "After all, someone like Harry saw you as capable of controlling the wolf and decided to take a chance on you. He doesn't do that with a lot of werewolves."

Leila looked at the ground, and a small smile grew across her lips. "It does help, to think about it like that."

"Good." Draco patted her knee. He had found himself becoming closer to more people than just Harry in the pack, touching them more often; the wolf craved physical contact. But Leila was the first one he had touched deliberately, without pretending the brush of bodies or hands was an accident. "And if nothing else, think about it like this. You can brew Wolfsbane. The Potions masters who can do that are rare, to say nothing of the ordinary people who try to brew it and end up with a mess on their hands. There are reasons that the Ministry controls the major supplies of Wolfsbane in Britain, you know."

Leila gave him an innocent glance. Truly innocent, Draco judged after a searching look, not mockingly so. "But that's a simple matter of following a recipe."

"There are people who aren't capable of following instructions," Draco said. He watched Hyacinth stroll into the clearing and show her teeth at Josh, who rolled his eyes and looked away. Draco shook his head. It was several days before the full moon now, and Harry had asked Hyacinth to refrain from abusing her dominance too much. "Here comes one of them."

Leila laughed, then blinked as if the sound had startled her.

Draco grinned back.

*

Draco slipped in silence out of his house and crouched down in the middle of the clearing, scanning with his eyes and nose until he could sense where Harry had gone. Then he trotted into the forest.

His eyes had grown much better in the light since he was turned, but he was most startled at the difference when he tried to see in the dark. Wherever he looked, the night seemed to turn grey instead of black. He couldn't make out as much in human form as in wolf, but he could still see hollows and humps that would have tripped him up before, and logs that might have broken his leg. He stepped over all of them and continued making his way towards Harry's scent.

Harry was sitting in the middle of a smaller clearing, his arms wrapped around his belly as though someone had tried to chew out his entrails the way he had chewed out a deer's on their last hunt. Draco winced and hurried over to him. Harry leaned back against the tree behind him and stared up at the stars, the few visible through the gaps in the branches. He didn't flinch when Draco sat down beside him and reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. Instead, he turned his head and nuzzled Draco's fingers gratefully.

"I did it," he said. "It was hard, but I fought and won."

Draco looked carefully in several directions, but made out no blood on the grass and leaves. He hoped that meant Harry's battle was entirely metaphorical. "Who did you fight?"

Harry looked up at him with sly yellow eyes, his tongue spilling out of his mouth. "My wolf," he said. "I confronted it with images of blood and gore and the way Lucius died—and then with images of you. It chose you. Always." He reached up and put his hand on Draco's forehead as if he was checking for a fever. His skin burned as warm as his power. "The same way I always will."

Draco leaned down and kissed Harry, too relieved and happy at the moment to think of doing anything else.

Harry promptly wrestled him to the ground, growling and biting playfully at his left shoulder. He seemed shy about touching the right one, where he had bitten Draco, but Draco grabbed his head and guided it there. Harry paused and looked into his eyes. Draco nodded once, giving him silent permission to touch it.

Harry drew back Draco's shirt to worry at the bite at the same moment as he slipped his hand into Draco's trousers and gripped his cock.

Draco hadn't been conscious of being hard, but now he was, no question about it. He writhed under Harry's imprisoning weight and the grind of his teeth, caught between sky and earth, his gaze wandering back and forth between Harry's eyes and the stars he could see scattered here and there. Then Harry ground down with his entire body weight at once, and Draco cried out and came wetly.

He wasn't sure how long he lay there before he began to fumble in a daze for Harry's erection. Harry shook his head and kissed his neck, lapping in long strokes at his pulse. "Came when you did," he muttered.

Draco smiled and draped his arms around Harry's neck in exhaustion. He felt a bit of shame that he hadn't lasted longer, but not enough to embarrass him. They _had _enjoyed longer sessions with each other, and times when Harry had fucked him until Draco was raw with need and happy with the lightest touch. A quick grope and fumble once wasn't a crime.

The moon wasn't full enough to cause trouble. Draco was lying in a fairly comfortable spot, and Harry's skin and magic chased away all thoughts of cold. Draco shut his eyes and slept, guarded and safe.

The wispy figure of Lucius sometimes showed up in his nightmares, but even there, Harry was present, sometimes as a bright-eyed human, sometimes as a black wolf, to stand between Draco and all danger.


	3. Outside the Wood

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Outside the Wood_

"You don't have anyone you want to visit? Anyone you want to see?"

Draco ground his teeth and tried to concentrate on sweeping the twigs and dirt out of his house. Harry could talk all he liked about "natural surroundings" and how the wolf felt at home in them; Draco wasn't out in the woods at the moment and he was at his most human, two weeks from the full moon, and the human hated dirt.

"Even I have a relative who hasn't abandoned me, and I committed murder." Hyacinth made it sound like a cause for celebration instead of a crime as she leaned against the doorway of his house and watched him critically. Again, Draco fought not to reply to her. Murder wasn't a crime if committed the way Harry had committed it, to save someone else, but he knew Hyacinth had been at the mercy of her beast. That wasn't heroic. "You should have one."

Draco focused on herding the dirt out of two of the inaccessible corners where it tended to gather, just under the threshold.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you." Hyacinth was almost growling now, her voice low and throbbing throughout the room. She had extended her magic, too, so that it brushed across Draco's skin and created a prickling sensation like dust in his nose.

Draco leaned the broom against the wall and looked at her, carefully not focusing on her eyes but on her nose. Despite her demand, she would take a direct stare into the eyes as a challenge. "What did you want me to say? My father's family was always distant from the main Malfoy branch, and I don't have any close cousins. My father and grandfather were both only children."

Hyacinth laughed; Draco could see her tongue hanging out of her mouth from the corner of his gaze. "And your mother's family? What about them?"

Draco said nothing. He was remembering the story of Sirius Black that Harry had told him the other night, his voice low and passionate with pain. Draco's aunt had killed his cousin, and from what little his mother had told him of the history of the Blacks, it often worked out that way.

"I asked you a question." Again the growl, but this time, Draco was much less impressed by it than he had been. Probably Hyacinth hadn't noticed, since she was so busy demonstrating her strength and wrestling with her wolf to gain ever better control of it, but he had watched her fight. He was growing better at his play battles with Leila, the ones she gave him to oblige him more than anything else; Draco could tell that she expected to lose to him and expected Draco to lose to Hyacinth. But she still did it, and so Draco was closest to her of anyone in the pack except for Harry.

_Harry._

It was the thought of his lover that had intruded on Draco now. Harry was closer to the remaining members of his mother's family than Draco ever would be.

On the other hand, perhaps that closeness meant that Draco could ask Harry to introduce him. If he would. If those members of his family, another aunt and another cousin, knew that Harry was a werewolf. Draco hadn't asked because he was so busy from day to day with his own matters.

"I have relatives," Draco said. "My mother despised one for marrying a Muggleborn, and then her daughter married a werewolf, which gave my mother another reason to be distant from them." He looked up with a bitter smile that he thought should fulfill Hyacinth's quota of things to make him feel bad about for the day. "I've never met them."

"Then I reckon you are poor in relations," Hyacinth said casually, and turned away. Draco watched her go, shaking his head. Harry had told Draco that he'd been insufferable for a short time after he started to gain control of his wolf, until the rest of the pack had mutually turned on him and snarled at him. Draco thought Hyacinth was going through the same thing as she became stronger and stronger, more certain of herself.

_Perhaps I should say something about her to Harry._

_But first, I want to ask about Andromeda Tonks and Teddy Lupin._

*

Harry turned and glanced sideways at Draco with a smile. "Just be the same as you always are," he said softly. "As you've been since coming to the pack. They know that I'm a werewolf, and if you make any little gesture that they might interpret strangely, they'll be willing to forgive it." He reached out and opened the door of the small house in front of them.

Draco tried to swallow through a dry throat as he followed Harry inside. He wished he could tell Harry that he was more worried about the bad blood between Andromeda and his mother than the fact that he was a werewolf. From everything he'd heard about Mrs. Tonks, she wasn't someone who would reject a relative based on what he was. She'd let a werewolf marry her daughter, after all.

But for her sister not to speak to her for years, and now for the sister's son to be crawling through the door timidly…

Draco didn't know how she would react, and that was what worried him.

"Harry? Is that you?" Andromeda's voice was soft and harried. "Teddy's just gone down for a nap after playing all morning. I hope that you and your friend can excuse the mess." She stepped around the corner of the front room, which was indeed a mess, covered with sheaves of colored-on parchment and scattered toys and cushions, and then stopped and stared when she saw Draco behind Harry.

Draco felt a moment's relief. At least Harry hadn't told Andromeda who was coming any more than he'd let Draco have advance warning of where they were going when he seized his hand to Apparate. They were on equal footing for the moment.

Then Andromeda's eyes filled with tears, and she took a step forwards as if she was being compelled against her will. Draco held his breath. He wondered if she would slap him or turn around in a moment and run away.

Instead, she whispered, "Oh, my poor child. Something horrible must have happened to you," and then ran across the rest of the distance between them and wrapped Draco in her arms.

Draco stood frozen. Her scent was heavy with grief and astonishment and compassion and so many other things that he couldn't even return the hug at first. He had grown used to the scents of the rest of the pack. He had forgotten that people outside it would have much more complicated stories wrapped in the folds of their bodies. He wanted to look at Harry for help, but he'd been seven months with the pack now, almost eight, and he _hoped _that he was past relying on Harry for every little thing.

Carefully, because Andromeda had startled him so much that he wasn't sure what she would do next, he reached up and embraced her, too. Andromeda made a sighing sound and whispered, "I could see the marks of suffering in your face. Is it only because you became a werewolf, or are there other reasons?"

"Other reasons," Draco whispered. He had planned to hide most of the information about his suffering from his relatives—he even wore glamours to disguise his lack of earlobes—but in the face of Andromeda's unexpected kindness and acceptance, he didn't think he could. "So many others. Becoming a werewolf was my escape from suffering into a different kind of life."

"I can understand that." Andromeda stepped back from him, wiping her eyes. "When Harry is involved, it's usually an escape." She turned around and smiled fondly at Harry, who gave her a gentle smile back, more human than Draco had seen him look in a long time. If Draco hadn't known him for months now, he would never have known how much Harry was restraining his strength so that he wouldn't hurt or frighten the human in front of him.

"I knew that you would like each other," Harry said in contentment, glancing back and forth between them. "You're both good people at heart."

Draco gaped at him, while Andromeda simply looked pleased. She opened her mouth to say something else, but the wail of a child from a different room interrupted her. Draco sniffed without thinking and caught a scent of milk and irritation and anger, but no fear.

"There's Teddy," said Andromeda, but she was smiling. "Would you like to meet him?" She turned to Draco, who was aware of how much depended on him answering in a way that she would find reassuring.

"Very much," he said. Nothing could have made his voice less hoarse.

Andromeda hurried away to pick up the child. Draco sat down on the couch behind him; he had smelled the leather and cloth the second he came in the door, though he couldn't remember seeing it. He put a hand over his eyes and tried to think of what his mother would say if she could see him sitting here with the sister she had despised and the baby she had despised all the more because a werewolf had fathered it.

Then he gave a choked laugh. _I wish she was alive to say anything, even though it would be an insult. Of course, she would probably also despise me for asking to be turned into a werewolf, so I would have lots of insults from her. That's all right. I just want to hear her voice._

"Draco? Are you all right?" Harry sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. His magic washed over Draco, this time like a bird's warm wings clasping a nestling. "I wouldn't have brought you in without telling Andromeda who you were if I wasn't certain you would get along."

"I know that." Draco raised his head and took a deep breath. "Just—I was wishing my mother was still alive." A sudden, horrible thought occurred to him, and he jerked around to look the way Andromeda had gone, which was a short dim corridor. "Does she know about my mother? Oh, God, if I have to—"

Harry squeezed his elbow hard enough to hurt and shook his head. "No. I told her about that soon after we rescued you, though I didn't tell her how I knew. She did her grieving and accepted it."

Draco sighed in relief and leaned back as they waited for Andromeda. Harry kept his hand on Draco's elbow. Draco would have said something about it in front of the pack, because there were people there (Hyacinth) who might grow jealous too easily or decide that Draco was weak because of it, but here he could accept it as a simple gesture from one human to another, and soak up all the comfort he could from it.

Andromeda came out at last. She gave a liquid, melting smile to the toddler in her arms, and Draco was stunned to realize how much she looked like Bellatrix—those heavy-lidded dark eyes, that long black hair. Nothing like his mother.

That made his wound ache less rather than more, though he was not sure why it should be so. To keep from thinking any more about Narcissa, Draco turned to look more firmly at Teddy Lupin.

And he lost his breath and his heart at the same time.

Teddy was rubbing a small fist into his eye and screwing his face up as if he couldn't decide whether he should be upset or not. His hair was purple, but as Draco watched, it turned a blue so bright that it hurt Draco's eyes. His scent shifted rapidly among emotions, but the background, of baby warmth and fatness and softness, never varied.

Then he looked up and saw Draco, and his currently brown eyes turned bright blue to match his hair. Draco had no idea what that meant, because he had never been around a Metamorphmagus long enough to know how hair and eye color matched to moods, but there was no fear in Teddy's scent.

He thought there must have been in his, because the hands he extended to Teddy shook slightly, and Harry squeezed his shoulder this time, in love and comfort.

Teddy considered him for an instant that seemed endless to Draco, worse than when he woke up as human for the first time after his transformation, and then stretched out his arms in return. "Arry," he said, with a nod at Harry as Draco took him from Andromeda. To Draco, the nod looked as practiced as the nod his mother would give people at society parties when they were meeting for the first time in months. Then Teddy glanced at him, and Draco swallowed. No, he hadn't imagined it. Teddy's nose and mouth looked like Narcissa's.

"You," Teddy said, and then paused expectantly, obviously waiting for someone to introduce him to Draco.

"That's Draco," Harry said, and leaned forwards so that Teddy could see both their faces at once. "You should try to say his name, but you won't get it right the first time."

Teddy gave Harry a tolerant glance, as much to say that he didn't know what Harry was babbling on about but he wished he would stop and let the real master of events, Teddy, get on with things, and then pulled Draco's ear. His eyes changed to grey ones. It took Draco a moment to realize Teddy was mirroring him. "Aco," Teddy said, sounding satisfied, and tugged hard enough on Draco's ear to hurt. At least he wasn't grasping the glamour of the earlobe. Draco wasn't sure what he would have done if that had happened.

"_Teddy_." Andromeda sighed and rolled her eyes. "We've tried to get him to stop pulling on people's ears, but he keeps doing it. Let me know if he's hurting you. I can take him." She hovered next to him, vigilant in the way that Draco imagined his mother must have been when she was letting strangers hold him.

"No, that's all right," Draco said, and leaned back on the couch. He didn't care about the small flashes of pain jolting through him from the point where the tiny hand gripped his ear. He found it difficult to care about anything but the brightness of Teddy's eyes and the way he stuck his tongue between his lips, holding onto it with his teeth, as he studied Draco's face. His own face melted and flowed into an approximate copy of Draco's.

Harry leaned further in, and Teddy glanced at him, gurgled, and changed his eyes to green.

Draco caught a glimpse of a vision that he couldn't have entertained even in his mind: what the world might have been like if he and Harry could have had children of their own.

He shut his eyes tightly to stop the tears from falling, and sniffed scents instead. Teddy's was pleased. Andromeda's was slightly worried, but she was also confident that her nephew wouldn't drop her grandson.

Harry's was full of wonder and longing and love, and the way he leaned down to snuffle at Draco's neck a moment later confirmed it.

Draco opened his eyes and enjoyed the impossible.

*

In some ways, though he enjoyed much of his life with the pack, Draco liked the third week after a full moon best. The pack was beginning to feel the call of their wolves, but in a way that made them more indulgent of wolf-like behaviors, rather than angry and restless and challenging each other for dominance.

Leila bit Draco on the back of the neck while he bent over the Wolfsbane Potion and dodged away.

Draco serenely ignored her, only moving a bit to the left so that he could consult the recipe again. Wolfsbane was challenging even for someone who liked Potions and who had brewed it several times before. It increased his respect for Leila that she had managed it, no matter how much she deprecated her skills.

Leila crept up behind him and nipped him on the elbow this time. Draco gritted his teeth, but still managed to ignore her. He tossed a clump of mint into the Wolfsbane and watched in satisfaction as the clear green color stabilized. Then he went through the process of adding the next three ingredients without fear. Leila knew the potion, and even in her playfulness she wouldn't jostle or bite him at moments when it would seriously damage the outcome.

Then Leila danced back again. Draco waited until she was near enough that he could almost see her, though she was a good enough hunter to keep in his blind spot as she came closer. He _did _hear the faint click of her jaws as she opened them to bite. He wasn't sure if his hearing had sharpened over the last few months or if he simply paid attention to it more, but it was true that he heard better than he did when he had first been turned.

He whirled to meet her just as she sprang. Leila had a moment for one breathless cry of surprise before Draco knocked her to the ground.

His old wounds twinged as they rolled, but that was all right, because he was sure that _her _old wound was doing the same thing. She wouldn't have started the game if she didn't eventually expect payback. She thrashed beneath him now, pushing her magic against him like a hand against his chest, wielding teeth and nails as instinctive weapons.

Draco let himself fall fully into the wolf mindset for a moment. He was still trying to figure out what would be instinctive a fight like this and what wouldn't. One of his best advantages when fighting Hyacinth in the future—and they still struggled a bit every full moon—would be to do something that she didn't expect, and he thought she relied far too much on the gifts her wolf gave her, not enough on her human intelligence.

He arched his neck to the side and tried to clamp his teeth on Leila's throat. That would be one of the ways to make her give up quickly, since she would struggle to breathe, and his wolf _wanted _the fight over quickly; it unsettled the beast when members of the same pack struggled.

Draco would remember that. For now, he pulled back and hit Leila sharply in the ribs, which would do her less damage and keep the fight from becoming something so serious there was no going back from it.

Leila gasped, the air driven out of her, and Draco leaped off her and dashed lightly into the woods. He knew she would chase him, and he was interested to see how fast she could run. For long minutes, her pounding feet weren't more than a few meters behind him, and Draco chuckled and didn't try to move faster.

Then Leila sheared off, and someone else joined the chase.

Draco knew who it was at once, of course. No one else had that scent, that heaviness of power that seemed to make noise in the forest even though his steps were completely silent, and that sheer presence at Draco's back. No one else was so familiar from sleeping in the same bed for whole nights at a time.

But Draco continued running without looking back, pretending that he didn't notice the substitution, and spun around laughing when he reached another clearing like the one in which the pack made their home.

Harry paused at the edge of the trees, then came towards him. His skin shone with sweat. His hair was matted with it. His arms gleamed with muscle, and Draco surged forwards to meet him, biting at his lips before they kissed.

Harry laid him on the leaves, using his magic to cushion the ground so that it would be comfortable enough for Draco to lie on and not get distracted. Then he banished Draco's clothes and looked at him with open lust. Draco didn't know if it was Harry's partnership with his wolf or simply the essential _Harry _nature of him that made him so comfortable with his lust, but either way, Draco wished to encourage him to continue.

He arched his back and moved his hardening cock towards Harry, wondering if it would result in a pinch and an admonition to stay where he was.

This time, Harry only bowed his head as if Draco's movement had reminded him of how much hunger he felt at the moment. He licked and slurped at Draco's cock as if he was starving. He kept his teeth well-covered, luckily; Draco had no desire to know what it was like to be literally devoured by a starving werewolf.

This was enough, this demanding wetness, this warmth that made him feel as if his brain was turning inside out. Draco writhed and sobbed, and Harry pulled back at last and licked his lips thoughtfully.

"Salty," he said.

Then he dived down again, and the curse forming on Draco's lips died into gasps. He reached down and tried to touch Harry's head, but Harry pushed him flat on his back again without looking up. Draco subsided and concentrating on keeping his gasps from becoming shameful.

He wasn't cold. He could never be cold in Harry's presence, even with winter not far away, since Harry's power flowing over him, sheltering him.

Harry settled in for some serious sucking, his eyes closed, his hands clenched around Draco's hips. Draco shivered as he watched him, neck craned at an uncomfortable angle so that he could continue lying flat the way Harry seemed to want him to do. Harry swallowed and hummed, and Draco's legs thrashed.

He held out for as long as he could, watching the expressions flicker and change on Harry's face like shadows dancing across leaves. When Harry opened his eyes and stared at Draco, Draco lost the battle.

He came down Harry's throat as if he'd been doing it all his life, his whimpering howls rising into the air without a trace of the lupine. Harry kept his mouth in place for long minutes when Draco was done, not licking at his oversensitive flesh, simply holding Draco within him. Then he sat up and shook his shaggy hair back, already reaching for his own cock.

Draco scrambled up this time and reached out eagerly. Harry watched him with half-lidded eyes and panted his way through the stroking, until he reached climax and tilted his head back like someone baring his throat in surrender. Draco couldn't resist leaning in and tonguing Harry's pulse as Harry's orgasm spilled over his hands, over both their hands, and onto the forest floor.

Harry opened his eyes and watched him without anger at the gesture, though it could be seen as Draco attempting to challenge him for pride of place at the head of the pack.

"Yes, Draco," he said, and those words encompassed a world of meaning.


	4. The Year's Moon

Thanks again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Eyes That Can See in the Dark. _I hope that you enjoyed the story and that it tied up some of the loose ends left from _Rejoicing in Their Strength._

_Chapter Four—The Year's Moon_

"I still think it's strange."

Once, those words would have frozen Draco. Now he could give Weasley a serene smile, secure in the fact that Harry's best friends would leave him and Draco would remain, and stretched out behind Harry, propping his chin up on his lover's shoulder. Harry reached back and stroked Draco's hair.

Granger, who had been more accepting than Weasley, nodded to them both and then turned back to Harry and launched into the subject that was obviously dearer to her heart than whether her best friend was sleeping with a Malfoy. "To answer your questions, Harry, there hasn't been any rumor that yours might have been the pack that killed Lucius Malfoy." She shifted on the moss-covered stone she'd chosen as a seat. Draco sniffed, and picked up only concern in her scent. He relaxed slowly. He didn't know what Harry had told his friends about the way Draco had joined the pack, but it was obviously enough to content them and yet not make them report the pack to the Ministry. The revelation of the trust that Harry shared with his friends humbled and awed Draco. "But anti-werewolf prejudice is still strong. I tried hinting the secret to a few people I thought I could trust, and they all leaped back like I had a catching disease." Granger looked disgusted.

"Lycanthropy _is _a catching disease," Harry said quietly, stroking Draco's head still, as though he thought Draco was the one who required soothing. "We won't win converts by trying to treat it as anything else."

"But it's not as though it's catching when you're in human form, and we would take precautions for what would happen when you were wolves." Granger shook her head so hard that her hair bounced away from her eyes. "I know why they're frightened, but there's no way to control it or fight it if you allow fear to rule you instead of reason."

"She's right, mate." Weasley's voice had a heaviness that Draco had never heard in it during their years in Hogwarts. It was the voice of a man who took his life seriously and had persuaded others to take him seriously at the same time. "You're going to have to come out of the woods sometime if you want anyone to treat you like a human."

"I'll do that," Harry said. "But not until I know that someone won't simply murder me because I'm a werewolf. How is the deal for Ministry protection going?"

"Slowly," Weasley said. "Kingsley knows, of course, but he's still half-reluctant to believe that werewolves can ever be anything but monsters."

"We'll keep fighting, though," Granger said at once. "As long as you're willing to come and show yourself off when necessary, and show that you aren't dangerous."

Draco snorted, though he didn't realize it had been aloud until the rest of them turned to look at him. Then he had to clear his throat and explain what he was thinking, which was much harder than he had thought it would be with Granger and Weasley staring. "It's stupid to say that we aren't dangerous. Of course we are. What we have to do is show what _kind _of dangerous that is, and what we're willing to do to safeguard our privacy and freedom and what we aren't willing to do."

He stopped, embarrassed and not at all sure that he had conveyed his point. But Harry was looking at him with the quiet approval he most valued, and Granger nodded as if her head were about to fall off.

"Of course, of course," she muttered. "That's part of it, too. We can't deny reality any more than our opponents should be able to deny reality if they see that you don't run after people trying to mouth their limbs in public. We have to remember that werewolves are dangerous and be ready to admit that—as long as we can qualify what we mean."

"Yeah," Weasley said, though with a dubious glance at Draco, as if he thought someone else should have made the suggestion.

Draco opened his mouth, but Harry pushed down a bit with his hand and shook his head. Understanding the message, Draco dropped back into silence and listened as Harry and Granger began to plot out ways that they could bring werewolves into the public eye without scaring potential supporters off.

Draco laid his nose next to Harry's back and closed his eyes. He had an interest in the conversation, of course he did, but it was near the full moon and his restlessness had kept him awake most of the night last night…

Besides, he had an important battle to wage tomorrow. Hyacinth didn't know it yet, but Draco did, and he had watched her carefully in preparation for it.

As he drifted off to sleep, he wished that he already had a tail, so that he might wag it and express his excitement that way.

*

The clearing was full of the cresting waves of power, as it usually was when the pack gathered before a run. Draco slipped out of his house and stood in the middle of it, absorbing it through his fur, feeling as if he were an integral part of it rather than a stranger as he had been before his first hunt.

Leila saw him and wagged her tail in greeting. Draco accepted her nip on the jaw with regal aloofness. They had planned the gesture, knowing that it would catch Hyacinth's attention. Draco was stronger than Leila, everyone agreed on that, but Leila usually showed such deference in wolf form only to Hyacinth and Harry.

A moment later, a growl rumbled across the clearing, cutting through the waves of power like a Muggle's motorized boat across the surface of a lake.

Leila lowered herself to the ground and flattened her ears so that she could look ingratiating and like a coward. Draco didn't mind. The whole point of the demonstration was to pin Hyacinth's irritation on him and not Leila. So he turned around with his head lifted at an angle that would have made Weasley splutter about Malfoy attitudes and his chest puffed out, his ears straight and proud.

Hyacinth trotted towards him, a vision of scarlet power that was no longer nearly as frightening as she probably assumed she was. Draco had watched her carefully down these months as she grew more and more overbearing and confronted the other members of the pack—always with the exception of Harry—when they'd done nothing but be around her. Celia and Josh stood together, and could outface her. Leila always yielded. Draco had done his best to ignore her, while giving her the impression of someone who _couldn't _ignore her.

So she was underestimating him, just as she underestimated everyone who didn't outrank her. And Draco, as he half-lowered his head to protect his throat and growled a return to her challenge, knew it would cost her.

Hyacinth halted five feet away from him, her ears slowly flattening in anger rather than an attempt to placate him. Despite how often she'd tried to provoke him into a fight, her stare was wide, and her scent brewed with astonishment. She hadn't ever expected him to face up to her, Draco decided.

A moment later, her scent changed to include more anger, but there was no caution that Draco could sense. Just anger that prickled the fur on his spine and made him want to tilt back his head and howl his challenge to the moon.

But there was no need for that, given that everyone in the pack knew what was happening by now. Harry, always the last to come out, was sitting next to Celia, his eyes bright and his ears lifted in interest. He bobbed his head when he saw Draco looking at him, and though Draco would have fought with or without his permission, he was grateful for it. He understood now why Harry had done no more in the last few months than temper Hyacinth's worst excesses. He knew that little he said or did as a human could have an impact on Hyacinth when their wolf sides would demand a strict pack hierarchy every full moon.

But if someone defeated her and made her assume a lower place in the pack as a wolf, then she would stop acting like quite such a bitch in any form.

Hyacinth was already prowling around to the side as though she intended to try a shoulder rush. Draco had noticed that her first attack was always a feint, however, when it wasn't a straight-ahead charge. So he balanced lightly on the tips of his paws and waited for her to try something other than the obvious.

She did. She leaped over Draco, and tried to scrape at him with her nails and snap a piece of fur from his ear on the way.

Draco dropped to his belly and let her soar over him. Then, when she was still stumbling about and trying to recover her balance when she'd been braced for an impact, he popped back up and bit her tail.

It was the perfect tactic, as he could see from the gleam in Leila's eyes and the way that Celia's tongue lolled out of her mouth. It humiliated Hyacinth and said that Draco could do anything he wanted, but had been refraining out of misplaced respect. This fight was a game to him and not a deadly serious duel.

That wasn't the truth, of course, since if he lost this fight, Hyacinth would probably make his life miserable for the next month because he'd had the temerity to challenge her. But the attitude and the impression were as important as the reality. Hyacinth had taught him that.

_She will not like how well I have learned my lessons, _Draco promised himself as he danced back and waited for her response.

Hyacinth didn't spin around snarling, and Draco admired the effort it must have taken her to control herself. She bared her teeth instead, and her breath came out in a deep huff that probably hurt her chest and her lungs. When she turned, it was with a scrape and stamp of her paw on the earth like a bull's hoof.

She stretched her jaws wider and wider, every hair around her neck bristling on end like a lion's mane. Draco knew the display was meant to intimidate him into falling over and showing his belly, and he did feel a shiver pass through him. Hyacinth looked in that moment like the monster she had been when she stepped into Malfoy Manor and attacked Lucius. He retained his human thoughts under the influence of Wolfsbane. He retained his human fear of monsters.

But he didn't intend to let that fear control him, the same way he wouldn't let Hyacinth goad him into attacking her as she had during their first fight. He was the master here, the stronger one psychologically as he might not be physically. He sat down and stretched his own jaws back at Hyacinth, in a yawn.

Hyacinth snarled, provoked beyond endurance, and attacked.

That was what Draco had waited for. He could use her own tactics against her, though he would not try to throw her; her weight was too much for him, and he might well break his neck. Though his werewolf magic could keep him alive even through such a wound, he would certainly lose the fight.

He whirled around and pretended to flee before her. They reached a tree at the edge of the clearing, and Draco swerved out of the way, using his lighter body to full advantage; he could change directions much more quickly than she could.

Hyacinth plowed into the tree.

Nothing in the world could have muffled Leila's high, delighted yip. Draco glanced at her and found her leaning forwards, her body straining from her position, trembling. She would have liked to leap in and help him, he knew, but battles like this had to be strictly private between the wolves involved, in case the beasts turned vicious at being interfered with and the hierarchy of the pack on the full moon nights became confused.

Harry watched with grave reserve. Draco knew that he would do what he had to do and come down on the side of the wolf who won the battle.

He turned to face Hyacinth again, yipping himself, light sounds that infuriated her. At least, that was the only explanation for why she turned away from the tree, shook herself, oriented on his voice, and charged in another display of blind rage that she should have known better than to make.

Draco leaped and rolled as if he was chasing his tail, turning around three times before she reached him, a display of grace and skill that wouldn't be lost on his audience. He completed his final round just before Hyacinth reached him and then clashed with her, paw to paw and fang to fang.

Leila whimpered. Once again, though, this fight was not as it had appeared. Draco had had a chance to brace his paws. Hyacinth had not, and her nails tore up the dirt as she struggled to get a better position; Draco had forced her onto her haunches before she realized what was happening.

Draco held onto his advantage, shifting back and forth so that Hyacinth would find it all the harder to close with him, lifting his paw so that it clasped her ears and wrenching sideways, dropping the paw quickly before she could do more than cry out in pain, and digging it into the dirt so that his claws would have a firm grip once more. Hyacinth staggered back, the blood from her torn ear running into her eyes and blinding her.

Draco snarled at her and forced her into a skitter backwards. Her instincts were operating now, and she was trying to guard her vulnerable throat and belly while she couldn't see. She shook her head furiously to get rid of the blood, but Draco darted in and tore another gash, faster than _he _had believed he could move. Then that wound bled into her eyes too, and she almost danced away from him.

She tripped over the tree root Draco had been guiding her to, and sprawled on her back. Draco was on her in a moment, the flash and gleam of a minute, his teeth pressed to her bared throat, his growl rising when she tried to move.

His teeth asked a question: _Do you yield?_

A natural wolf would have. But if Draco was a combination of human and wolf, Hyacinth was much the same. She tried the tactic that Draco had once pictured himself using and raked his belly with her hind legs.

Draco had anticipated that and locked his legs into place, hunching over with his mouth on her throat—he had to do that anyway, as he was smaller than Hyacinth—so that he could protect his belly. Her nails raked nothing more than tough fur and flesh over his leg bone. Draco growled to help himself through the pain, and then wrenched his head sideways, hearing the shrill outcries from the pack. They feared he was killing her.

Draco didn't intend to. He only wanted to introduce some fear into Hyacinth's arrogance and make her realize what she was dealing with. Draco _could _have killed her. He wanted her to appreciate that.

The wound ripped across her throat was shallow, but bled even more than the gashes in her ears. Draco shifted lower and tightened his grip like a bulldog. When she opened her eyes and stared at him with scarlet motes swimming in the gold, Draco looked back. He didn't know exactly what his face looked like.

He judged her reaction based on the tremor that raced through her body and the fear in her scent.

She tried to heave herself out from under him. Draco let his weight fall and held her pinioned. He was smaller than she was, yes, but not by so much. He should have remembered that in the first fight. He knew now that her bulk had been so effective because he had been overly impressed by it and had _let _it be so effective.

Hyacinth snapped and snarled at him. Draco didn't flinch back the way she wanted him to. He ground down with his teeth, sawing his head back and forth to rip another small chunk of flesh free.

Hyacinth kicked and squirmed, trying to roll them over so that she was on top. But Draco had all four feet dug in on either side of her now, and she might as well have tried to move a tree, complete with long branches, that had fallen on her. She'd probably have better success with the tree, as a matter of fact.

Hyacinth stared at him.

She should have known better. Draco retained more of his human mind than she, and humans didn't mind stares in the same way wolves did. He looked deep into her eyes, and went on looking. Hyacinth, meanwhile, trembled more the longer she looked.

Finally she looked away from him and let her body fall limp. Draco waited, his teeth still locked in place, though he would have let Leila or Celia or Josh go at once. But he was too wise to her tricks to expect her to abide by the rules.

Hyacinth ran her tongue around her teeth, snarled, and then leaned up and nipped at his jaw.

Draco accepted the signal of submission for what it was, and leaped off her. He felt the bite she had given him on his leg paining him, joining with the old wounds from his torture. He had actually been hurt worse than Hyacinth had by their fight, at least in body. Draco was sure he had given her pride a beating.

And yet, he had won. He was the one the others looked at with awe.

Draco pranced up to Harry's side and accepted the way Harry leaned on him. He was still the leader of the pack. Of course he was. Draco would not have wished to challenge Harry even if he had the physical and magical power to do so. He couldn't take the place in the pack that Harry had, as comforter and guide and constant source of strength.

But he could rejoice in his undisputed right to run at Harry's side over logs and bracken.

*

"Hyacinth's gone into the woods so that she doesn't have to see you for a while, you know."

Draco opened his eyes. The pack usually spent all day sleeping after the night of the full moon, to recover, in part, from the incredible experience the night always was. When he looked up, he saw the light of sunset falling through his door and understood why Harry was awake. They _had _spent all day sleeping.

"I don't care," he murmured, and yawned, fully parting his jaws like a wolf. He half-felt covered with fur still, and his legs ached as if he could ease the pain only by running on all fours.

"Neither do I."

Draco paused. That tone wasn't Harry's usual one. He took the part of no members of the pack; he didn't interfere in fights unless someone was bullying someone else; he favored no one in pack business.

But now he was offering a warm voice of unqualified approval to Draco. It was a gift, Draco knew, and he rolled over to accept it with a pounding heart.

Harry leaned on the doorway, his arms folded and his legs crossed and his eyes bright with amusement. The wind from outside ruffled his hair. He straightened and came forwards, the glow of his power all but visible around him.

Draco leaned up from his bed to kiss him, unable to remember what he had felt like a year ago when he wasn't yet Harry's lover, when he wasn't yet turned, and didn't have this. Oh, he could _think _about it, if he concentrated enough. But the emotion was gone from that life; it was only a painted picture in his memory. This was the reality, and felt as if it always had been the reality.

The life of the wolf.

Harry took off the shirt that had been all Draco had tossed on after the run with grave fingers. Then he used his tongue before his wand to prepare Draco, though in the end conjured lubricant came out, as it always did.

Long before that point, Draco lay still with his eyes shut and harsh puffs of warm breath emerging from his lips, now and then writhing when his pleasure broke his control.

"I love you so much," Harry said, his voice as worshipful and warm as his tongue. He gave Draco's arse one more lick before he pulled back and slicked his own cock. Draco lay and listened to the noises that he knew so well after a year, and then arched his back and groaned in welcome as Harry sank into his body.

He lay on his bed facing away from Harry, draped on his stomach, and Harry rocked above him, motions gentle, steady, regular. Quite often they made love face to face, but they were so at home now after a year together that they didn't have to look at each other to know each other's expressions.

Besides, there was the scent.

Harry smelled of lust so intense that it made Draco dizzy, and obscured every other smell in the small house for quite some time. Draco made no special effort to keep track of the time, since Harry filled him and raked him and squeezed him with pleasure. But he forced his eyes open at last and sniffed delicately, when he had grown used to the drifting cloud of passion.

Wild, soft as paws in the forest, keen as eyes that saw in the dark, there was the smell of love.

Draco whimpered at the sense of it, and Harry whimpered back, and then shoved forwards with several thrusts that Draco relished, because they meant that Harry had ceased to think about whether his strength would hurt Draco and was only thinking about their pleasure. Pleasure entwined, mounting, racing, turning and twisting and braiding into itself as their voices braided at the full moon—

And Harry came, and Draco came a moment later, hunching and pushing into the cushion beneath him, and they howled like wolves when they found release, and the smell of release was salty and sticky and wonderful.

Harry collapsed over Draco's back, kissing his shoulder blades. Draco hummed under his breath and turned over to embrace him, though that made Harry slip out of him and the bed creak alarmingly.

"You were the best decision of my life," Harry whispered.

Draco wished he had something to say that was as profound and simple as that, but he settled for wrapping his arms around Harry and kissing him instead, sloppily and with lots of tongue, trusting his scent to speak for him.

When he passed into dreams with Harry asleep on his chest, he dreamed mingled dreams of racing legs and whipping tails and gleaming teeth, and waving human limbs and teeth showing in a smile and skin gleaming with sweat.

And no matter where he ran, no matter how he danced, Harry was at his side.

**End.**


End file.
